My Favorite Blogs for Creativity

“The endeavor of writing can be long and lonely. Mary Carroll Moore, master writing instructor, to the rescue! Moore packs How to Plan, Write, and Develop a Book with years of gritty good sense and big-picture perspective. Her techniques for drafting, organizing, and polishing a book are practical and time-tested. Here is a first-time book-writer’s best companion.”

--Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew,author of Writing the Sacred Journey: The Art and Practice of Spiritual Memoir

If I could implement all I've learned from you, I'd have a best-seller!

I was a student at the Loft [Literary Center] when I lived in Minneapolis. I do miss your classes since moving to France. I just recently discovered your blog and have been re-inspired! After a long period trying to ignore that nagging voice... I am beginning again! Thank you so much! --Karen Eberle

Writing Exercise: Dialogue with Your Book

Pretend you’re a reporter for the New York Times. You’re going to interview your book idea.

List some questions you’d love to ask your book about its form, content, goals. You can start with something nonthreatening, as you would if you were a real reporter.

Ask your book some very good questions. Some ideas from my class are below, or you can make up your own:

What do you want to tell me about yourself?What form suits you best?Who is your readership and how will theyaccess you?What are you most eager to say?What are you most afraid to say?What genre are you?

When it runs out of things to say (or you getnervous about the answers) ask a different question.

The goal of this book-writing exercise is to surprise yourself. You’ll tap the hidden parts of yourself as a writer, the parts we often censor. You can strike gold--if you maintain the attitude of no-assumptions and anything can happen.

A person’s life purpose is nothing more than to rediscover, through the detours of art, or love, or passionate work, those one or two images in the presence of which his heart first opened.Albert Camus

Visitors to my blog--including you!

Friday, February 15, 2013

There are some important signs of burn-out that writers need to attend to.

An overactive Inner Critic. A feeling of the blues about one's work. A sense of deep depletion, despite enough sleep and exercise.

Any of these sound familiar?

Yesterday
I was working on a chapter revision. After about the fourth
draft--making changes, printing out a new version, reading outloud and
editing again, then inputting the changes--I noticed I was making it
worse. This is a sticky chapter, an important one, right at the end of
the first act. Everything is supposed to go down.

It was. But not in the story--in my own work on it.

I
had a deadline. But I wondered, was it better to take a break now,
despite all the urgency of my deadline, and fill the creative well?

Winter Blues, Winter BreaksWinter
is a great time for writing, here in New England where I live. We just
got hit with the monster snowstorm and about three feet of white stuff
is in my yard. Lucky me, to be able to stay indoors in my cozy writing
room and work on the book--at last! Summer has gardening and all sorts
of other temptations.

Winter is the best time for writing, for me.

But
winter can also bring most of the creative burn-out symptoms listed
above. Is it because of the incubation? Cabin fever is another name
for winter blues in my life. Whichever--it spells disaster for the
creative person, without the clean air of well-timed rest breaks.

Writers
need these rest breaks. They feed the creative side of us, fill the
well again, so we can continue creating. If you're feeling any of these
symptoms, read on.

Those Who Give A Lot Need the Most ReplenishingIn
addition to being a writer, you may be a giver. Someone who works
hard, who serves other people and community, who really believes in the
idea of paying it forward. Maybe you're a thought leader. Maybe you
are someone people count on for innovation, whether it's figuring out a
sticky problem at work or negotiating well with a teenager at home.

If
you've been stretched to the max these past months, still recovering
from the holidays or school starting again or a new project at work, you
may need to switch gears and get replenished.

Take advice from prolific novelist, Dorothy Allison, who talks about the importance of "necessary boredom."

"Necessary
boredom" is not the blues. It can feel like playing, actually, if you
let yourself. The goal is to shut off the linear, get-it-done brain,
and let the right, nonverbal side of yourself come forward.

Learning How to Play with Your Right Brain--My Emergency List
A good friend once helped me create an emergency list for just these
times. I keep it in my journal. It has ways to play. Many people
don't need such a list--I do. I need to be reminded how the right brain
works! Especially when I've been on task forever.

Here are some items on my list:

1. Make a collage2. Take out the colored pencils and color in my journal3. Go on bing.com and look for images that remind me of my characters in my book4. Draw my book's main location5. Read someone else's book--and see how they solve a problem I'm struggling with 6. Nap7. Take a long walk or go snowshoeing8. Clean a closet (surprisingly, any repetitive activity rests the linear brain)9. Listen to music or do anything with sound--sing, hum, play guitarFeeding the ArtistThe Woman's Retreat Book
by Jennifer Louden is my go-to resource for more ideas. It's packed
with ways to disengage and reacquaint yourself with yourself. This
time, I turned to the section called "Feeding the Artist."

I
read the first line: "If there is one cosmic law I know the
consequences of ignoring, it is this one: you cannot create from an
empty well."

When one is empty, it's hard to see that. Many of
us keep running anyway, fueled by adrenaline, and the spark gets
dimmer and dimmer. You get the idea.

One of Jennifer
Louden's most important directives in this chapter on "Feeding the
Artist" is not to create while you're filling the well. Stop working on
your project, stop trying to manifest anything. Ugh, that was hard.
What about the deadline?

I figured it would still be there,
when I came back from my rest break. I even tried one more round on the
chapter, and when it was still not working, I gave in.

Funny
thing. As I began to fill up again, new ideas started coming. I
watched another episode of Downton Abbey, then picked up a book that
just came from the library and read. I fixed a lovely lunch for
myself. I ignored the siren call of my chapter and took a short walk
with my sweetie.

By
dinnertime, I was feeling a lot less linear. I began to see things of
beauty around me--a good sign that the stress has lessened and the right
brain is alive and well.

When I went back to my writing room
after dinner clean-up, just intending to shut down the computer and head
to bed, I was pretty surprised when the chapter ideas started flowing.
A great solution emerged--and when I got it on the page, I liked it a
lot.

Who knew?

This Week's Writing Exercise
1. Take stock. Do you need to feed the artist? Is she or he starving
from too much output and not enough input these past busy months?

2. If the answer is yes, can you carve out time for a rest break?
Even five hours in a day when nothing is needed of you is amazing and
precious.

Your Book Starts Here now on audio! Click image to learn more

How to Bake a Book:

"Start with a big love of words, add a generous helping of Mary Carroll Moore, mix with leavening from your peers, knead vigorously, and voila! Your book has risen!"--Eric Utne, founder of Utne Reader

Upcoming Book-Writing Classes with Mary

Your Book Starts Here online classes,starting the week of January 19, for all levels of book writers in memoir, fiction, or nonfiction. Sponsored by Loft Literary Center. $525 for 12 weeks of great community, weekly feedback, and skill-building. Click herefor details. How to Plan, Write, and Develop a Book, one-day workshop, Grub Street, Boston, Saturday, February 7. $110. Click herefor details.

A Little about Me . . .

Mary Carroll Moore is an award-winning, internationally published author of thirteen books in three genres, writing teacher, editor and book doctor for publishing houses. For thirty years she's helped thousands of new and experienced writers plan, write, and develop--and publish!--their books. Photo by Bruce Fuller Photography.

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If you believe you have a book inside you just waiting to come out, here is a guide that will ensure your book’s arrival in the world. In clear, accessible prose, Mary Carroll Moore leads the aspiring author through every step of the challenging, rewarding process of developing and completing a full-length book.

--Rebecca McClanahan, author of Word Painting

Want to get the creative brain going?

Book writers (and any writers) need to know how to engage the creative right brain that "writes" in images. Think of any wonderful book that's left you swimming in a setting or characters--the writer has successfully used the image-creating part of the brain. But our normal workaday lives short-circuit this part. Check out this cool video of Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, a brain scientist at Harvard Medical School, recounting her personal experience of a left-brain stroke and her awakening to right-brain reality. Pretty amazing fusion of brain science with what it feels like to a brain scientist having a stroke:http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/229

Flying Squirrels Bring Creative Jolt to Novelist

Flying squirrel gets into house--disrupts routine, gets novelist thinking differently. This happened to me! For two days, as I chased the squirrel (actually, it was all night since they are nocturnal), I slept very little. And got many new ideas for my novel-in-progress.Go figure!Maybe...book writers need creative jolts? Routine dulls our imaginations? How has an unexpected interruption actually been a gift for your creativity this week?

At the Loft Literary Center, I can always tell which students in my classes have taken Mary Carroll Moore’s class on book-writing. They talk about writing their book in "islands" and using storyboards to figure out how those sections relate to each other. When another student confesses to feeling overwhelmed by the material her memoir might include, they readily advise, “You should try Mary Carroll Moore’s method.” I second that.--Cheri Register, author of Packinghouse Daughter and American Book Award winner

Encouraging Words--Well-Known Writers with Large Number of Rejections--But Published!

Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo--397 rejections (and it became a movie)A Wrinkle in Timeby Madeleine L'Engle--97 rejections (and it won the Newbery Medal for best children's book of 1963; it's now in its 69th printing)Cinder Edna by Ellen Jackson--40 rejections (and it has won multiple awards and sold 150,000 hard copies). Judy Blume says she received "nothing but rejections" for 2 years.Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot--17 rejectionsHarry Potter novels by J.K. Rowling--rejected by 9 publishersThe Diary of Anne Frank--16 rejections (and now more than 30 million copies are in print)Dr. Seuss books--more than 15 rejectionsJonathan Livingston Seagullby Richard Bach--140 rejectionsGone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell--38 rejectionsWatership Down by Richard Adams--26 rejectionsDune by Frank Herbert--nearly 20 rejections

To all book writers: Believe in your story. Keep trying. The right home for your book is out there, waiting for you to discover it.